The Murder Seat by Noel Coughlan

1984, Dublin
     
    Dr.
Herbert Marriott gazed upon the austere wooden chair idly placed
inside the windowed cabinet. Fifty years of dust lay upon it. A
half-century had passed since its evil had been imprisoned behind
glass, sentenced forever to be an untouched exhibit in his
museum.
    Its
murderous history began in 1847, at the height of the Great Famine.
One of Major Mackleton’s tenants, recently evicted, visited his
residence to beg for her home back. The major invited the old woman
briefly into the reception hall to remind her of the money she
still owed. Incensed by this humiliation, she laid a curse upon
him. Within a fortnight, his two strapping sons were found dead,
thrown from their horses on the same hunt. Soon after, the major’s
wife died of grief. Even his favorite dog succumbed to the
malediction. The major himself lasted another month before he, too,
died of some unspecified ailment. According to legend, he departed
this world screaming.
    His
servants blamed these calamities on the chair the major had sat
upon when the old woman laid her curse. They claimed that to rest
upon it invited death.
    The
Roycroft-Smythe family, the major’s cousins, scoffed at this
superstitious claptrap when they inherited his property. Within a
year, they, too, had died. A succession of unfortunate owners
suffered the same ill fate, until one canny individual, William
Boyce, donated it to the Dublin Museum of Culture and Art. Yet his
wit did not save him. The day after the chair arrived at the
museum, Boyce’s house collapsed, killing him and all whom he
loved.
    The
Murder Seat, as more lurid elements of the press dubbed it,
remained in storage until its infamy had somewhat mellowed. In the
thirties, the then curator, Henry Tyrwhitt, desperate to finance
the museum, exhibited the chair as a means of drawing in
less-refined patrons. At first, the gambit succeeded. People from
all over Ireland came to see the notorious chair. A few braver
souls even sat upon it to test the curse. The museum’s takings from
this most unusual exhibit exceeded Tyrwhitt’s wildest hopes. But
then people began to turn up dead…
    Of
course, no court found the museum culpable for these deaths. They
were unfortunate accidents. The fact that all the victims had sat
on the Murder Seat was coincidental. But in 1934, Tyrwhitt was
moved to protect the public from itself by locking the chair away
in a glass cabinet, just before he drowned in the
Liffey.
    Exactly
five decades later, Herbert, his current successor, now held the
key to the Murder Seat’s prison in his quivering hand.
    He had a
problem he hoped the chair might solve, and her name was Concepta
Ryan. His secretary. And his lover.
    Their
affair had begun so innocently, but now it threatened to wreck his
marriage and ruin his good name. She demanded the impossible. He
could never leave his wife. He loved Margaret. But Concepta had
made less than subtle threats that she would destroy what she could
not possess. The action Herbert contemplated wasn’t murder, merely
self-defense.
    Besides,
the curse might be merely happenstance and exaggeration fabricated
by macabre imaginations. Concepta might survive sitting upon the
chair. The thought stirred anxiety as much as it eased his
conscience. If the Murder Seat failed him, what then?
    He
pushed the little key into the keyhole and tried to turn it. For an
agonizing moment, the lock refused to budge. He applied more
pressure until it clicked open. The cabinet trembled dangerously as
he swung open the squealing glass doors.
    He gazed
upon the intended means of Concepta’s demise. The plainness of the
chair only added to its menace. It was of a type found in many
historic houses. Indeed, most chairs in the museum’s offices were
exact replicas—a tasteless joke made by a previous curator. Even
Herbert had been forced to use one since his ten-year-old swivel
chair broke.
    He
patiently waited for the cleaner to pass by. The regular lady was
on leave, so some